Jon Stewart to Gov. Perry: So what happened to GWB?

GOP Gov. Rick Perry, touting his anti-Washington book “Fed Up!” on The Daily Show, gave a familar line to Jon Stewart as he talked about how states should be able to properly oversee environmental regulation and other issues.

“States are by and large run by thoughtful people, men and women, who aren’t going to let their environment go to hell in a handbasket,” Perry said. “This book’s about freedom.”

Stewart noted that former President George W. Bush was Perry’s predecessor as governor.

“I’m assuming you believed he was a very thoughtful” leader at that time, Stewart said. “When he went to Washington, did he lose his mind? It is the same person. When you go to Washington, do they calcify your brain?”

Perry said he’s actually said that sort of thing: “There’s like a virus… Maybe theyh spew it out. I don’t know what happens.”

So, Stewart asked, Washington’s sort of an Ebola virus?

Perry deadpanned: “I can’t prove that.”

Then he said people who go to Washington “get absorbed with the Washington culture.”